Please can someone who thinks that TWAW..

[BertrandRussell]

...explain to me the intellectual process that got you there? I promise -and as far as I can I promise on behalf of other people - not to challenge or argue and only ask clarification questuons. I just want to understand, even if I don't agree.

Yes, thank you Anchor. So sorry this issue has had such a personal cost for you

If this full room of people that Rat is speaking to is there for medical reasons; how would you direct the people who need a smear test to one door, and the people who need a prostrate exam to another?

Is there a word for each definitive group?

Are we really now going to say that 'those that need a smear go through the pink door, and those that need a prostrate exam go through the blue door'?

Or is painting the doors pink and blue seen as non-inclusive in the first place?

Anchor

Thank you for an articulate voice from someone with more 'skin in the game' than most people.

@AnchorMum

I'm sorry for what has happened and how it has divided your family.

That must be incredibly difficult.

You are right - I am struggling.

I find it hard to reconcile the rights of the individual with the rights of the group when upholding the rights of one side will automatically erode the rights of the other side.

The reason I continue to look at and post on these boards is in the hope that I will see something that will be the key to it making sense for me.

The reason I continue to look at and post on these boards is in the hope that I will see something that will be the key to it making sense for me.

The trouble is there is no solution which will equally please males who actively want to violate females' boundaries either for validation or other personal reasons, and females who want privacy from said males. NATALT, obviously.

Perhaps one way through your confusion is to think of it in terms of "Chesteron's fence". Chesterton was talking about a new land owner wanting to remove a fence. Before he does so, Chesterton argues, he should first think about why the fence is there.

So - sex segregated sports. Are these just a hang-over from the days when women were treated as weak, delicate flowers? No, because there are genuine physiological differences between the sexes which mean that women cannot compete fairly against men and stand a chance of winning.

Sex segregated toilets. Are these just a hang over from Victorian days where women were thought of as the delicate sex? No, Victorian women actually had to fight for the creation of women's toilets, to enable them to get out of the domestic sphere of the home and into the public spheres of education and politics - and they needed sex-segregated toilets for reasons of safety. As do women in countries like India where absence of women's toilets is still a major barrier to women's participation in society, and where women are at risk of UTIs because of holding urine in all day, because the only way women in rural villages feel safe is to go, en masse, to the field set aside for toileting once a day, because if they go individually there's a very high risk they will be raped. Sex, not gender, segregated toilets arose for very good reasons and continue to be needed for very good reasons. (Which is why the TRA argument that they are in any way analogous to racially segregated toilets in the deep South prior to the civil rights movement is so TOTALLY FUCKING OFFENSIVE it's untrue).

That's so positive to hear Teddy. And I really hope you continue to contribute your thoughtful posts to the discussions.

@FermatsTheorem

Thank you for that explanation and I understand all of the reasons why and agree with them.

I think my difficulty is with the how.

How do we apply it in every day life?

We might agree, or disagree, on the scientific explanation of what is male or female but in every day life we rely more on the social construct of male and female.

Toilets and changing rooms can largely be overcome by individual cubicles, apart from where they create difficulty for women with children.

Sports there appears to be no answer too.

There is no way to reconcile the sides and yet if we insist on dividing into only 2 groups, male and female, then some way of defining who is in what group has to be found.

but in every day life we rely more on the social construct of male and female

do we?

Yes I'd love an explanation of why that is necessarily the case.

Teddy

I think it would be very wrong to expect a trans person to use facilities designated for their biological sex.
I think it would be very wrong to expect person of one sex to share sex specific facilities with people of the opposite sex.

I don't agree with any solutions that requires either of the above. There are solutions that do not require the above expectations, however, they are often rejected on the basis that they recognise sex based rights.

Can you fight for trans rights without trying to erode sex based rights? Many trans people can and do!

but in every day life we rely more on the social construct of male and female

do we?

Well up until now how have we decided who goes into the women's toilet?

It would be who looks like a woman surely? If I saw what looked like a man in there I'd challenge him. I wouldn't ask for a DNA test or a look in his trousers to see if he could or couldn't be in there.

That's what I meant. We tend to go on appearance rather than on biology in our day to day lives.

99.5% of the time we are right in our judgment though. Probably even more. That's generous.

Go and fight for a third unisex space for trans people and leave my rights alone.

I'm sick and tired of the stupid, disingenuous arguments that end up with giving men the legal right to use women's spaces and services.

Well said. They do.

I think it would be very wrong to expect a trans person to use facilities designated for their biological sex.
I think it would be very wrong to expect person of one sex to share sex specific facilities with people of the opposite sex.

@MsBeaujangles

Thank you. This is my belief too and I've never seen it reflected on these threads. All I've seen is the biological/birth sex argument which I just cannot reconcile with.

I'm sick and tired of the stupid, disingenuous arguments that end up with giving men the legal right to use women's spaces and services.

Exactly.

Sport is also an easy one - it has to be segregated by biology. If it isn't, there literally ceases to be any point to having women's sport. I suppose women's sport could maybe continue as part of the paralympics, for people with Y chromosome deficiency or some such. But that would be a pretty bonkers "solution" to a non-problem with an obvious answer, which is that sporting ability is about biology, so biologically male people don't get to compete in women's sport.

If a transwoman really cares about playing competitive sport at the highest levels, then the option still exists for her to defer starting cross sex-hormones and play men's sport - see the link to footballer Jaiyah Saelua that I posted upthread. It is then up to men's sporting bodies to uphold her right to privacy and dignity by providing suitable changing facilities. It is not women's problem.

The TWAW lobby tell us that the word 'woman' no longer means adult human female, because male people have claimed it from us.

No problem, they say, be nice, share. You be you, they say, this doesn't change who you are. Woman DOESN'T mean XX, ovaries, people who didn't get the vote, they say. That's a different thing altogether. Woman means something about feelings and presentation and identity and unquestionable declarations, and people with penises, too.

Ok, say I. Even if I accept that, the word isn't useful to me now, because it doesn't fit me now. Its like you cut some extra keys to my front door for yourself and your friends, and now having my original key is of no use. I need to change the locks and start over.

I'd like to know, then what I am now, what word I use now for the XX people that isn't as confusing as 'woman' apparently is. There are 3.7 billion of us born this way, what's our word when I want to talk about me, and us, in a way that acknowledges how different we are from the others? Not identity, but hard, unchangeable biology?

Oh easy! They say. What's the topic of conversation? Menstruation? You can be menstruators. Pregnancy? You are gestators, or people-who-can-get-pregnant.

No. What's the word, to talk about the entire group whenever I want to talk about us, regardless of the topic? Like, when I want to talk about the difference between us and the others when it comes to rape, and to voting rights, and to representation, and to health risks, and to criminality, and to all things? What's the word for all of us that I am allowed to have to do that?

You can't have one. You can't do that. You can't talk about that half of humanity. About ALL the group. About yourselves. No word for the XX people who gave birth to us all. No word for the largest oppressed common group in the history of humankind. You don't get a name any more.

There are infinite words available to men who like dresses, or who feel feminine. One can be invented that perfectly describes them. The reason 'woman' is the goal is BECAUSE it means adult human female. Whatever word adult human females come up with becomes the goal.

When people say TWAW, what they are really saying is "females are not allowed to be recognised as themselves, distinct from males, on their own terms, ever'

Go and fight for a third unisex space for trans people and leave my rights alone.

Isn't that exactly what the fight should be though?

There needs to be third space, not a shared space because when you try to define who can use a single sex space you boil the argument down to a trans man is a woman who therefore can use a woman only space.

Which makes no sense to me.

If I saw what looked like a man in there I'd challenge him.

Is my 8yo supposed to do that by herself, though? How about my 12yo? How about my colleage, permanently on crutches? My 94yo Nan? My sister with her toddler in tow? This is what hardened my stance on sharing facilities - I can and will defend myself if necessary, and god knows I train hard enough to do that, but these women and girls can't. Even if cubicles are floor to ceiling, there's still a risk in closed-off but communal areas. The crux of safeguarding is to minimise risk - and while we can #notallmen and #notallTW til we're blue in the face, the fact remains that (to steal a phrase I saw elsewhere) #AnyIsTooMany. That's why we have sex segregation for intimate areas now. Self-id just sweeps all that away.

Stands up and applauds Barracker.

That is a fabulous post.

I tend to focus on the practical implications on threads like this, but you are right about the massive political implications.

What we're talking about here is nothing less that the Stalinist removal of the language needed to talk about the single most consistently oppressed group in all of history and across all cultures. We cannot name our oppression if we cannot name ourselves.

It would be who looks like a woman surely? If I saw what looked like a man in there I'd challenge him. I wouldn't ask for a DNA test or a look in his trousers to see if he could or couldn't be in there

What is the difference between a man dressed as a man, and a man dressed as a woman?

Apart from clothes?

Are you saying that you would be more at risk if you challenged a man dressed as a woman? But you would be happy to challenge a man dressed as a man?

I had this experience a few weeks back, I walked out. A man had misread the sign. nothing untoward. But I am not hanging about in a toilet with a man - no matter what he is identifying as.

There needs to be third space, not a shared space because when you try to define who can use a single sex space you boil the argument down to a trans man is a woman who therefore can use a woman only space.

Yes. A third space. As most people here are advocating should be constructed. Not "all toilets are unisex".

Women only spaces for women and men only spaces for men. Third single floor to ceiling door spaces for trans people.

BrownPaperTeddy - I sometimes think of the argument like the curate's egg (1)

All females are cells in that egg, one big mass of different cells doing different things, but all still egg cells.

The curate's egg concept means that that the TW cell that gets in, may be the smallest % of the overall female cells now, but it still makes the egg inedible. The TW cell may seem a bit like the female cells, but it is actually very different and therefore totally changes the balance of the overall egg.

(1) www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/163300.html
NB. And - of course - I am not saying TW are rotten or bad or anything, it is simply an analogy.